Hey guys! Rusty here at Blue Robotics with an exciting new product:
the Ping360 Scanning Sonar.
The Ping360 is a mechanical scanning sonar, one of the most common types of
sonar used on ROVs. It's best suited to assist with navigation in low
visibility water conditions but it can also be used to locate targets
underwater or for basic sonar imaging. Let me first explain how it works. Inside
the Ping360 is a transducer that emits a narrow beam of acoustic energy and
then listens back for echoes. That transducer is mounted on a motor that
rotates it in one degree increments and as it does so it generates a 360-degree
image of the surroundings. As an analogy that's very similar to what you'd see on
the weather radar on the local news which, using radio waves instead of sound
waves, generates a map with echoes from clouds and precipitation nearby. It's
also similar to laser scanners used in robotics and autonomous cars for
obstacle avoidance and environment mapping. Like both of those devices there
are lots of applications for scanning sonar but today we'll just focus on ROVs.
When used on an ROV like the blue ROV - the Ping360 gives you a top-down
view of your surroundings. Here's a quick video to demonstrate what that looks
like
looking down on the ROV here in Dana Point Marina we can see the nearby docks
and boats but since the water is murky and visibility is only a few feet it's
difficult to get around in the ROV. When you add the scanning sonar to the mix
you get an acoustic image of the surroundings. Here you can see echoes
from the boats, docks, and other features around the ROV. The Ping360 can see
features like this up to 50 metres away. This allows you to navigate the ROV in
complicated situations even when visibility is poor so you can still
complete your mission. Driving the ROV along an old wharf in
the Port of Los Angeles you can see the wooden pilings that support the pier.
It's a lot easier to navigate here when you always have a reference point on the
sonar view.
Out in open water the Ping360 is useful for finding and
tracking salient features. Here's a view from the sonar as the ROV approaches a
shipwreck. You can see the angular features and the acoustic shadows behind
those features. This view gives you reference points to navigate around the
wreck without getting lost. Let's talk a little bit more about
what's inside now. At the top of the Ping360 is an oil filled section with a
plastic cap. The oil resists water pressure but allows acoustic energy to
pass into the water. Inside is a motor that rotates the transducer to scan in
every direction. The transducer operates at a frequency of 750 kilohertz and has a
vertical beam width of 25 degrees and a horizontal beam width of 2 degrees.
At the bottom of the sonar is an air-filled section that has the main processor PCB.
Four tapped m3 holes plus an included mounting bracket make
it easy to mount on ROVs like the BlueROV2. The sonar is rated to a depth of
300 meters and comes with a one meter cable with pre-installed cable
penetrator and connectors. Electrically it can be powered from any clean 11 to
25 volt power source and communicates through USB,
RS-485, or Ethernet. Like the Ping Echosounder, the Ping360 connects to
Ping Viewer, our open source sonar visualisation application. There's a new
device manager in Ping Viewer that makes it easy to connect the Ping360 whether
it's connected directly to your computer or through the tether on the ROV.
Ping Viewer support for Ping360 is still in beta and we expect to add new features
and capabilities in the future. If you're interested in checking out the product
documentation for Ping360 including a guide on how to install it on the
BlueROV2, you can find that on our product page. In the future we'll have additional
guides explaining how the sonar works and how to get the most out of sonar on
your ROV. We're launching the Ping360 in beta, meaning that while the hardware is
well tested, the software is still improving at a rapid pace. In addition to
new features we expect to incorporate customer feedback on how it can be
improved. The Ping360 is available on our store starting today and you can
download the Ping Viewer application and supporting libraries on the product page
and our Github pages. That's all I've got for today. Thanks for watching and see
you next time!